Correctional Facility Retreat Conclusion November 2023
December 2, 2023
Prison Retreat (Program Residents Encounter Christ)
Hello Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
It was a great and productive three day long retreat for us the volunteers and the prisoners. The Priest who came with us was Fr. Jaya Kumar, MSC (Missionaries of the Sacred Heart) and he did a wonderful job with mass in the prison and confession. His speech and sermons were also great and relatable. We had prisoners both protestant, baptist, non-denomination, and "spiritual" make their CONFESSIONS for the first time in their entire lives. We even had some Catholics who confessed for the first time in decades and were able to receive communion for the first time since they were children living in places like South America. The prisoners went up one by one and told all of us just how their confessions went, and the impact Fr. Jaya had upon them. It literally ignited their faith, as some had his prayer shawl cast over their heads along with his hand over their forehead pouring out blessings upon them after confession.
Truly an amazing retreat. We also enrolled one highly dedicated Catholic prisoner who is committed to the Rosary into the St. Joseph Eastern Province Rosary confraternity upon informing him of his prayer responsibilities. He wakes up every morning before everybody and recites the rosary with a group of men who are willing while also saying it throughout the day in the yard. This man also comes under persecution for this from fellow prisoners and even protestant/atheist guards but remains faithful. Please pray for Resident A who was actually a former adjutant professor at numerous colleges. He should be out soon and will reunite with his wife. He is also considering becoming a Deacon in the Church.
There has also been a sparked interest in vocations. A few men were interested in entering first order religious monasteries in their respective hometowns. We provided them local information on this so they can reach out to them. One person explained how his secular life never panned out well for him and how the influences of alcohol in the world and money always brought him to jail or in trouble with family. Now that there is a possibility he can return to the world and completely focus on the Lord with a community of like-minded men in a religious order, it appears all the lights came on in his eyes now that he discovered there is a different way. This young man is also single with no children and could one day become a Priest, so please, pray for Resident B from Buffalo to draw closer to the Lord through a religious community when he is released in the next coming months!
Also please pray for Resident C, who was in the initial invasion of Iraq and witnessed much death. He is trying to find his path, but has been suffering from PTSD and drug addiction since 2003 (what ended him up in prison). Also please pray for his girlfriend who committed suicide.
Please pray for Resident D from Long Island to reunite to his family. Resident D came over to this country in a container unit with dead bodies who ran out of air. He was looking for a better life for his family.
Please pray for Resident E, who is a baptist and who spent most of his life in prison. In our prayer circle, he had to turn the crucifix around because he believed the carved image of Lord Jesus Christ was an idol and he could not accept that it was an image to remind us of the honor of God. Please pray for the Lord to increase his faith and draw him closer to the one true Church.
Please pray for Resident F who is Christian but does not have a Church. He asked me how he should be saved, and when I gave him the steps that Lord Jesus Christ said through His Church, he did not fully agree (as baptism goes). I explained to him that the thief on the cross was forgiven, but that Lord Jesus Christ told him this personally. Unless the Lord appears to us right now and says we are entering Heaven, then it would be prudent of him to follow what He told us in His procession of the world. I gave an example in his environment, that he would just not walk back to his dorm from here unless a guard told him to. He would not take it upon himself to do this. Resident F agreed with me.
We also provided a historical timeline of the Catholic Church to the prisoners, showing a direct narrow line path from Jesus Christ in 33AD to the present, along with all of the spider web paths of other religions and versions of Christianity. Hopefully this hit home for some of them.
Please pray for Resident G, who is being baptized in the prison next Wednesday by our Bishop. Myself and the local Watertown team along with the prison chaplain who is a Deacon will also be there. Satan has been coming for this child of Christ very hard, and he has been getting attacked constantly. He is going through much despair, torments, and temptations to anger as he closely approaches his baptism next week, as I did as well before I was baptized. So please pray for the Lord to protect him. He will not be receiving his first communion or confirmation the same day because other prisoners have went to the chaplain to say negative things about him. So they want to make sure he is serious about this and those sacraments will come later, as I explained to him myself. He is very torn over this though, and I explained to him how it took me 2 years to get into the Church and I did not think I was even going to enter or get baptized. So, I keep reminding him to focus on his baptism, which is a minor exorcism, and to keep up the faith one step at a time.
I almost forgot, please add Resident H to your prayer list. He is a Jewish man who was converted to Christ in 2020, just like me. Me and him have a connection because of our historical lineage to Judaism and the same time of our conversions. He was baptized by a protestant sect, and pray to the Lord that He will come home to the true Church. He was there for one day in our retreat last May, but was removed by the guards for some reason unknown to us. when we saw him on our monthly visits, the guards would try to discourage him on his way to meet us - saying such things as "why are you doing this, you know God will never forgive you right?"
So, please pray for this son of Jacob to come home to the true faith and be strengthened. Thank you!
SPEECH & PROCLAIMATION OF THE GOSPEL MESSAGE GIVEN TO THE PRISONERS:
People of God as a Community of Love
By Scott Lowry
Open with proclamation of the gospel message and prayer:
My friends, please consider that today is not a mistake nor is it a coincidence.
God’s plan- God has a plan for you and He loves you. He did not leave you here on a rock to die. Nor did he put anything on your plate that is too much for you to handle. Rather, He tests you so as to refine you like gold in the furnace, just like all of His beloved children such as the Saints and Angels.
Bad news- The bad news is that sin entered into the world through our first parents. By their disobedience we inherited death, illness, despair, and all kinds of trials which were brought on by evil influence and those who wish to become their own light, which is no light at all, but darkness.
Good news- The good news is that we are not without hope. For God came down from Heaven and become man for our sake. By His blood and through faith we are justified and destined for eternal life like the angels who dwell in His presence. In this day in age, in Babylon, all of us have a choice to make, for the Lord or against the Lord. There is no in between, for those who dwell somewhere in the middle, so as to be lukewarm, will challenge your faith because their faith is so little and they go about the world in despair and confusion. The Lord’s goal is to preserve you, for He can do such a thing because He is literally the Author of Life. Remain in Him completely, and you shall live even when your body dies.
Invitation- The Lord, who is the First Catholic, created a Church for which you are to gaze upon this very second. The 2,000 year old Roman Catholic Church which was given authority by Lord Jesus Christ Himself through His Apostles where the gifts of heaven through the sacraments await you. Do not deny the Lord’s gifts, rather eagerly move towards them in whatever disposition you find yourself in. Now, I invite all of you this day to close your eyes and ask the Holy Spirit to enter your hearts if you have not already considered it. Starting this day, deny yourselves so as to willingly and joyfully take up your cross so as to follow after Him so He can walk with you in all things and become your teacher.
Now we pray:
+Sign of the cross
Adoration – Lord, we love you and we praise your Name. We magnify you and glorify you with our thoughts, words, and deeds.
Contrition- We are sorry for all of the times we fall short. We are sorry for our lies and the people we hurt over and over again.
Thanksgiving- We thank you for sparing us and bringing us here together this day. We thank you for all the good things you have given us and we thank you for the trials you give us so as to mold us into strong servants ready to carry out your will.
Supplication- We ask that you bring down your Holy Spirit and enter the hearts of everyone here today. To straighten what is crooked, and to strengthen what is weak. To increase our faith by raising up our intellect to the full knowledge of you and to become a beacon of hope and light for all of those around us who dwell in darkness.
In the name of Christ Jesus, AMEN!
+Sign of the cross
For my entire life, I was not a person of God. I did not acknowledge Him, nor did I think about Him, nor did I even consider Him and His ways. I did whatever I wanted to do as an atheist with no rules and boundaries. I did not believe in Him nor did I have any knowledge of His existence until the dead of the night in 2020 when He came for me and converted me. When He did this thing, I had a choice to make; for the Lord or against the Lord. For the truth or for what is false. The truth has intrinsic value and it is above you and me. I had to change because I honor the truth. I was wrong and He was right. The truth doesn’t need our approval to exist and be. Rather, it is our responsibility to change for Him who is the truth so we can see all of this for what it really is. We were made for love in a community to glorify the Lord through our worship as a spirit wrapped in a body made of flesh and bone. Today, we are a community behind these wire fences.
Many people may ask, especially someone like me – what is love? I never knew what love was as an atheist because I was too focused on myself. Love to me was ownership, sex, property rights, dominance, what I provided someone, and protecting what belonged to me even at the cost of someone else. Not until the Lord converted me, did I understand what love truly is. Love is wishing the good of another for its own sake while expecting nothing in return. What is the ultimate good? Bringing your soul to salvation through faith in the Lord who is everyone’s calculated end and First and Last. Divine beatitude is the ultimate good and those who try to bring you this end for which everyone was made for do this in love.
Now, knowing this, there is no enemy or other. There is no rival or competitor. There are just sheep who are found and sheep who are lost. Truly, Christ is in you, and if He is in you, then He is also in your neighbor regardless of what he looks like or says to you at the moment in ignorance. Whenever I get angry at somebody now and want to retaliate, I begin to think long and hard about how Christ knew that person as a baby and walked with that person his whole life. How that person’s mother and father loved them too, and how this person is special to someone on earth and especially the Lord who wills it that this person has been put in our path. The Lord is patient with us, and not one breath that we take this second is for our own purposes and plans, but allowed for us to come to repentance. Anything beyond that is the Lord carrying out His mission for you here on earth through you for there is still things you must do in the flesh for the good of another. This too is also love in the highest degree. For what the Lord has done for us, we cannot ever repay Him, but we can somewhat accomplish this through those He puts in our path so as to carry out the purpose to which we were made for and that is to love one another as oneself.
Suffering with a brother and sister is also what we are called to do as Christians because Christ suffered first with the most horrible kind of torment for our sake. So, we should also follow after Him in embracing our suffering as well – not because we are sadists – but because anyone who wishes to come after Him who is eternal life must first deny themselves and take up their own cross so as to follow after Him so as to fulfill His commandments.
The Lord has also called us to assemble and to worship with one another, for where there are two or three who gather in His Name, He shall be present. Not my words, but His. So my friends, you can take it to the bank that He is here with you this day. Worshipping alone has its purpose to fill in the gaps for times between communal worship, which is always a higher more fruitful form of worship, but some take it to the extreme by believing they do not need to go to Church or assemble with other Christians who are the Body of Christ. This is a false thought because the Lord has directly told us with His own words to be together as one in community. For those who truly love Him, they will follow what He says and not what others say. The words of prideful men do not nullify what the Lord our God says. Nor does an influential person or somebody with many book sales and fame. The Lord knows what is best for us, and you would do well to heed what He says.
Lord Jesus Christ established the first Christian community through His Apostles. Those same Apostles laid hands upon Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, and this chain has been unbroken for 2,000 years all the way back to Christ. The first Christian communities were baptized together, suffered persecution together by the Romans, mourned death, poverty, imprisonment, and celebrated life together. As some of those in the world who wish to confuse you through deception and lies would like to suggest, that the Roman Catholic Church just suddenly “appeared” in the 5th century by a Roman Emperor, is untrue. The first Christians in community who walked with the Lord, the Apostles, and the Church Fathers – the same Christians who were thrown to lions for entertainment and sport, erected to the top of wooden beams and lit on fire as Roman candles to light up the streets of Rome at night, and the same Christian community who were marched off to the middle of lakes in the winter to drown for their faith by the pagans who worshipped demons – did not just magically teleport themselves through dozens of Roman persecutions against Christians between the time of the first century and fifth century. No, the Church isn’t Star Trek, nor did its members teleport their atoms from one point in time to another instantly. The Church endured all of these things – as it given you Holy Scripture and the tools to attain your salvation on earth as Lord Jesus Christ told you plainly through the procession of His word.
Now, as a Levitical Jew, I was careful to decide which Church I would enter when the Lord converted me from atheism. I wanted the gold standard, not the product of some man’s opinion and self-authority, which is no authority at all, or from the opinion of a man who lived in the 19th or 17th century. What was I to do? So, I studied the scriptures diligently and prayerfully while following the succession and line of the Priesthood from my ancestors of Levi, Aaron and Moses. I looked at it objectively and not subjectively so as to entertainment my preconceived notions and confirmation bias. Without a doubt, the Levitical Priesthood of the Old Testament with its covenants transferred to St. John the Baptist who was also from the line of Levitical Priests, and that same John the Baptist baptized our Lord in the River Jordan. That same Christ Jesus also called and laid hands upon His Apostles, who in turn laid hands upon the Bishops, Priests, and Deacons for the last 2,000 years up until this very day. As a Levitical Jew newly Christian convert without a community, and realizing these undeniable truths, what was I to do? What are you to do, once the pieces of the puzzle come together? The Priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church are the successors to the Levitical Priesthood where the fullness of worship resides. But don’t take my word for it, its even in our Catechism, so go read it!
All of you here today are also a Christian community. Some of you are in the fullness of worship, while others are considering drawing closer to its fullness according to what your heart can handle at this present time or what you can personally accept according to your spiritual disposition. Mark my words though, all of you are one in Christ Jesus through your suffering and your cross which you bear on your shoulders this very moment. Come together as one and remain as one during your stay here. All of you are individual lamps. Put together in unison, you all will shine as bright as the sun and nothing will be able to quench your fire. After we leave here, pray with one another, encourage one another, and strengthen one another as the body of Christ. Walls and prison guards cannot keep the Lord out of this place, even though they try. Coward evil spirits going in and out of people in your presence who challenge your faith are no match for what you are and what you will truly become. They cry out in terror at the mere thought of your holiness, and they make it a point to attack it at every corner. The weapon of faith cannot be defeated, for those who have faith have transcended this life into the next and shall become like angels of a new creation. I can not stress you enough my brothers, do not be afraid of those who seek to harm you and throw you in despair. Rather, you should rejoice in this, for the same thing has happened to Christians for thousands of years and if it did not happen to you, then you probably wouldn’t be Christians! I mean, it even happened to Christ Himself – who was the first Christian prisoner. Wear the persecution as a badge of honor, for it is your strength, and seek out in every person you come across the salvation of their soul, because this is true love.
This is the service to God you can offer here. You see someone in darkness? Shine your light upon them. You see someone who is confused about the truth? Correct them. Do you see something that is crooked and needs to be straightened? My friends, this is the way of the Lord. Pound your chest three times with me if you are willing.
Pound chest x3 times.
Now, none of you are no longer estranged or mere co-residents. Rather, all of you are brothers in Christ Jesus – who is the Alpha and Omega. For when He is with you, who can be against you? Imitate Him and walk in His ways so your joy will be made complete. The purpose of life is to find Him and to love one another as He loved you. Thank you.
Close with prayer:
+ Sign of the cross
St. Michael prayer…
In the name of Christ Jesus, AMEN!
+Sign of the cross